Sylvia+Plath

**Sylvia Plath**

By Amanda McCausland, Kelsey Rapp, and Eduardo Zighelboim

__Biography:__
Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts during the height of the Great Depression (//Encyclopedia of World Biography// 2006). Her Father, Otto Plath, was a highly esteemed Biology and German professor at Boston University where he received his Doctorate of Science in ‍entomology‍. Being stripped of his name from the family Bible for failing to become a Lutheran minister as his parents and grandparents had hoped, Otto took a permanent position as a professor at Boston University. A Polish immigrant, Otto spoke German, Polish, and French before he learned English; however, this did not stop his communication as he had an affair with a young master’s student named Aurelia Schober in 1930. Aurelia Schober, who renounced her Catholic religion, worked as a librarian and typist at Boston University after being ‍salutatorian‍ of her high school and valedictorian of her college class. Connected by their shared love of science and language, the two ‍apostate‍s were driven by Aurelia’s mother to Reno, Nevada so that Otto could divorce his wife; they then traveled to Carson City, Nevada to get married in 1931 (Wyant 2011). Together they had two children, Sylvia (1932) and Warren (1935).



As a child, Sylvia Plath inevitably became depressed and angry by her father's death in 1940, a week after her eighth birthday. Otto Plath died of ‍gangrene‍, "the consequence of a diabetic condition he refused to treat" (Klinkowitz 2652). Despite all opposition, Plath excelled greatly through the Winthrop Public School system while growing up in Boston, where she would dazzle her teachers with her superior writing skills. At her home in Winthrop, Massachusetts Plath fell in love with, and feared, the ocean; this infatuation, her father's passing, and her mother's struggle to support two young children all encouraged and influenced Plath's writing--she was first published while she was eight years old in the Boston //Sunday Herald//. Upon moving to Wellesley, where she lived until she entered college, Plath was reenrolled into the fifth grade in order to be with children closer to her age due to the fact that she began school two years early.



In 1944, Plath began to keep a journal, which became her best friend and most trusted confidant. She documented details about the world that would normally go unnoticed or taken for granted; with these details Plath found inspiration for her poems and stories, which became more important as she approached her collegiate years (Steinberg 2007). At Gamaliel Bradford Senior High School, Plath continued to amaze her teachers with her remarkable writing abilities and even became editor of her school newspaper, //The Bradford.// Ambitious as she was, Plath began to have her poems and short stories published nationally despite the many rejection slips she received. By 1950, her works could be found in popular magazines such as //Seventeen, The Boston Globe,// and the //Christian Science Monitor.// With a total of nine acceptances, Plath accumulated $63.70 in reward (Reuben 2011). As she continued to make straight A's in school--excelling in English and creative writing particularly--Plath earned a scholarship from famous author Olive Higgins Prouty to attend Smith College, an all-girls' school in Northampton, Massachusetts, to enter in the Fall of 1950 (Steinberg 2007).

At Smith College, Plath had an English professor who would only give her B's for her work; however, by earning A's on two papers, Plath was able to raise her average to a B+. This made Plath feel subpar, like she would never be able to reach her goals (Reuben 2011). In 1952 Plath won first prize in the //Maidmoiselle// Fiction Contest for her short story "Sunday at the Mintons" and later won a Guest Editorship at //Mademoiselle// in 1953, which is well covered in her famous novel __The Bell Jar__. After returning from New York, Plath was hoping to be accepted into a Summer Writing program at Harvard University; however, when she learned that she was not accepted in July, she suddenly ended her journal entries(Gállego 2001). Although she was academically successful, Plath could no longer afford the high tuition for Smith; therefore, she attended Lawrence from 1952-1953. This caused Plath to become severely depressed because she felt she was not meeting her 'perfectionist' ideals; she also suffered from writer's block during this period. Plath attempted suicide by way of drug overdose and was sent to a mental hospital for a year, where she received ‍‍electroshock therapy ‍‍ (Reuben 2011). Plath recovered a year later. She returned to Smith College where she graduated Summa Cum Laude and won her Fulbright Fellowship to Newnham College at Cambridge University. At Cambridge, she continued to write and soon met her husband, a fellow poet, Ted Hughes. Plath and Hughes met at a party in Cambridge. When she learned of his presence, she sought him out and began to recite his own poetry to him. After drinking and dancing for some time, Hughes began to kiss Plath's neck and she responded by biting Hughes's cheek until he bled. Madly in love, Plath wrote her poem "Pursuit" for Hughes in which she referred to him as a panther. Incontrovertibly, Plath was at the same time involved with another man named Richard Sassoon, who, upon learning of her interaction with Hughes, instructed Plath not to contact him until she had made up her mind. Plath unsuccessfully pursued Sassoon for a long time until she received a love letter from Hughes and immediately decided to go to London to be with him. The two were married on June 16, 1956 at Bloomsbury and moved into a flat on Eltrisley Avenue where, ironically, relatives of Sassoon lived. In 1957, Plath and Hughes made plans to move to America (Steinberg 2007).

In August 1957, Mr. and Mrs. Hughes spend some time on Cape Cod, where Plath visited Rock Harbor, which became the subject of her poem, //Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor//--her first poem published in the //New Yorker.// From 1957 to 1958, Plath taught Freshman English at Smith College; she soon found out how ‍strenuous‍ teaching was and quit after a year in order to focus all of her time on her writing. Plath later attended Robert Lowell's poetry seminar at Boston University, where she became very close with another famous poet, Anne Sexton. Sexton and Lowell had an immense impact on the development of Plath's writing style, introducing her to a more personal and in-depth style of writing. Plath wrote most of //The Colossus// in Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, where she and Hughes were invited as writers-in-residence for two months (//Encyclopedia of World Biography// 2006). During the summer of 1958, Plath took a part-time job at Massachusetts General Hospital where she found inspiration for her short story "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams". In 1960, the same year volume one of //The Colossus// was published, Plath gave birth to her daughter, Frieda Rebecca; two years later, after an unfortunate miscarriage, Plath gave birth to her son Nicholas Farrar. Plath also had an ‍appendectomy‍ in 1960 and was hospitalized for many weeks at St. Pancras Hospital, where she spent her hours writing poetry. In 1961, Plath began writing __The Bell Jar__ and worked on it incessantly for seventy days. Plath was inspired by the fact that she could create children and it showed in the twenty-two poems she wrote in 1961. While still in the hospital, Plath received a "first reading contract with a check of $100 from //The New Yorker,"// indicating that //The New Yorker// would have first pick at publishing all of her new poems (Steinberg 2007).

Plath and Hughes moved back to England because Hughes wanted his children to grow up in his home land. Over time, Plath began to grow very skeptical of Hughes's loyalty; unfortunately, her intuitions that Hughes was having an affair were correct. In order to work out their differences, they went on vacation to Ireland; however, Hughes did not stay for long and suddenly left after two days. Later that month, Plath and Hughes opted for a legal separation instead of divorce. After returning home alone, Plath looked for a new home for herself and her children. She spent the next two years taking care of her children and writing poetry while Hughes visited every now and then to take the children to the London Zoo. In the last few months of her life, Plath wrote some of her most brilliant works which turned into her collection //Ariel//, published ‍posthumously‍ by Hughes. In January 1963, Plath published __The Bell Jar__ under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. Just six says before her death, Frieda and Nicholas were sick, Plath was depressed, and it was very cold outside. On February 11, 1963, in the early morning, Plath sealed the doors that separated her from her children. She left a note to the man who lived in the apartment below her to call her doctor. Finally, Plath proceeded to take a handful of sleeping pills, turn on the gas stove to her oven, stick her head inside, and successfully killed herself (Steinberg 2007). She left her children two mugs of milk and a plate of buttered bread (//Encyclopedia of World Biography// 2006//)//. Sylvia Plath is buried in Heptonstall, Yorkshire, where her gravesite is visited by hundreds of people every year.


 * HISTORICAL CONNECTION**

Having grown up during some of the most eventful decades in American history, Sylvia Plath incorporated much of her life experiences and surroundings into her poetry. She used historical events and mid-twentieth century’s societal structure to compare her own life and her own struggles to that of the real world in order to bring the reader to the conclusion she wanted to make. World War Two, which began in 1939, and the Holocaust are used many times throughout Plath’s poetry and literature to give the reader an idea of the pain she felt. In her poem “Lady Lazarus,” Plath directly relates her suicide attempts to that of the torture that the Nazis inflicted on the Jewish people, ultimately becoming a Jew herself (Aird 1973). In the 1950s, women were viewed as second-class citizens with little to no rights. Plath’s feeling of limitations and entrapment has been “directly connected to the particular time and place in which she wrote her poetry” (Annas 1980). Women in the 1950s to 1960s were very oppressed due to their lack of rights in society and the work place. This oppression shows in her poem “The Applicant” in which the protagonist is a doll that can cook, sew, and talk. Plath felt this degradation of women--that women have limited abilities-- realistically because her husband Ted Hughes treated her as his subordinate. “The Applicant” portrays unequal marriage in the time period as well as a job seeker, which directly connects to the Capitalist economic system by which the United States lives (Annas 1980). The job seeker may also be a reference to the end of the Great Depression as many men attempted to re-enter the working world. By the time the 1960s came around, the Civil Rights Movement dominated all radio stations and newspapers across the country. Plath makes reference to the Ku Klux Klan in her poem “Cut.” Through her ability to recreate events in detailed writing, Plath made it possible for readers to easily identify historical connections.

Poems
 * LIST OF MAJOR WORKS **
 * Daddy
 * Morning Song
 * Totem
 * Cut
 * The Applicant
 * Elm
 * The Colossus
 * Ariel
 * Lady Lazarus
 * The Munich Mannequins
 * Tulips
 * The Rabbit Catcher

Short Stories
 * ‍‍The Bell Jar ‍‍
 * Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (story)

Collections media type="youtube" key="6hHjctqSBwM" height="315" width="420"
 * Ariel
 * The Colossus and Other Poems
 * The Collected Poems
 * Letters Home
 * Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (collection)

__‍"Daddy" ‍By: Sylvia Plath__

 * You do not do, you do not do**
 * Any more, black shoe**
 * In which I have lived like a foot**
 * For thirty years, poor and white,**
 * Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.**


 * Daddy, I have had to kill you.**
 * You died before I had time--**
 * Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,**
 * Ghastly statue with one gray toe**
 * Big as a** Frisco **seal**

Ach, du.
 * And a head in the freakish Atlantic**
 * Where it pours bean green over blue**
 * In the waters of beautiful** Nauset **.**
 * I used to pray to recover you.**


 * In the German tongue, in the Polish town**
 * Scraped flat by the roller**
 * Of wars, wars, wars.**
 * But the name of the town is common.**
 * My** Polack **friend**


 * Says there are a dozen or two.**
 * So I never could tell where you**
 * Put your foot, your root,**
 * I never could talk to you.**
 * The tongue stuck in my jaw.**

Ich **, ich, ich, ich,**
 * It stuck in a barb wire** snare **.**
 * I could hardly speak.**
 * I thought every German was you.**
 * And the language obscene**


 * An engine, an engine**
 * Chuffing me off like a Jew.**
 * A Jew to** Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
 * I began to talk like a Jew.**
 * I think I may well be a Jew.**

//Sylvia Plath extends the reference by making the father a German Nazi and the girl a Jew, so that on a historical and actual, as well as an emotional level their relationship is that of torturer and tortured// (Steiner 12).

~//Although Otto Plath came from Silesia, in what was then Germany, he was not a Nazi, nor was his daughter Jewish, nor is there evidence that he mistreated her// (McNeil 9).

//Plath's use of simile and metonymy keeps her at a distance, opening up the space of what is clearly presented as partial, hesitant, and speculative identification between herself and the Jew// (Rose 25).


 * The snows of the** Tyrol **, the clear beer of Vienna**
 * Are not very pure or true.**
 * With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck**
 * And my** Taroc **pack and my Taroc pack**
 * I may be a bit of a Jew.**

Panzer **-man, panzer-man, O You--**
 * I have always been scared of you,**
 * With your** Luftwaffe **, your gobbledygoo.**
 * And your neat mustache**
 * And your** Aryan **eye, bright blue.**

//Plath faced opprobrium from later critics, who viewed her Holocaust imagery as insensitive and narcissistic because it compared her personal pain with the historical pain of European Jewry// (Fermaglich 3).


 * Not God but a** swastika
 * So black no sky could squeak through.**
 * Every woman adores a Fascist,**
 * The boot in the face, the brute**
 * Brute heart of a brute like you.**

//Here the repetitions, the insistent rhyming on the// ou //sound, and the tone of mixed contempt and fascination all serve to mimic and perhaps to exercise a child's fixation on authority, self-hatred, and guilt// (Molesworth 15).


 * You stand at the blackboard, daddy,**
 * In the picture I have of you,**
 * A cleft in your chin instead of your foot**
 * But no less a devil for that, no not**
 * Any less the black man who**


 * Bit my pretty red heart in two.**
 * I was ten when they buried you.**
 * At twenty I tried to die**
 * And get back, back, back to you.**

//The father's negative omnipresence, while it conveys a truth about the state of obsessive mourning, also expresses an unappeased wish on the part of the hurt little girl whose voice can be heard here// (Williamson 16).


 * I thought even the bones would do.**


 * But they pulled me out of the sack,**
 * And they stuck me together with glue.**
 * And then I knew what to do.**
 * I made a model of you,**
 * A man in black with a** Meinkampf **look**


 * And a love of the rack and the screw.**
 * And I said I do, I do.**

//She [Plath] first attempted to do this [tried to die] by joining her father through suicide but then found an escape through marriage to a man with many of her father's characteristics// (Steiner 12).

//~Plath confesses that, after failing to escape her predicament through attempted suicide, she married a surrogate father, "a man in black with a Meinkampf look" who obligingly was just as much a vampire of her spirit--one who "drank my blood for a year, / Seven years, if you want to know"// (Phillips 1).


 * So daddy, I'm finally through.**
 * The black telephone's off at the root,**
 * The voices just can't worm through.**


 * If I've killed one man, I've killed two--**
 * The vampire who said he was you**
 * And drank my blood for a year,**
 * Seven years, if you want to know.**

//And the end of the poem drops the carefully established Nazi allegory for a piece of vampire lore. Plath imagines that a vampire-husband has impersonated the dead Nazi-father for seven years of marriage, drinking the wife's blood, until she has finally put a stake through his heart (the traditional method of destroying the vampire)// (Rosenblatt 4).

//~When she drives the stake through her father's heart, she not only is exorcising the demon of her father's memory, but metaphorically is killing her husband and all men// (Phillips 1).


 * Daddy, you can lie back now.**


 * There's a stake in your fat black heart**
 * And the villagers never liked you.**
 * They are dancing and stamping on you.**
 * They always knew it was you.**
 * Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.**

=__Vocabulary__= Short for "San Francisco"

Massachusetts beach

In German, "ah, you"

A person from Poland or of Polish descent

A trap for catching birds or animals, typically one having a noose of wire or cord

In German, "I"

German concentration camps, where millions of Jews were murdered during World War II

Austrian Alpine region

Variation of Tarot, ancient fortune-telling cards. Gypsies, like Jews, were objects of Nazi genocidal ambition; many died in the concentration camps.

The German air force

People of German stock with blond hair and blue eyes. Adolf Hitler preached the superiority of the Aryans.

In German, "armor"

The emblem of the German Nazi Party

In German, "my struggle." Also, Adolf Hitler's political autobiography written and published before his rise to power, in which the future dictator outlined his plans for world conquest.

Vocabulary Sources: Klinkowitz, 2656-2658. Apple Dictionary Version 2.0.2 (51.4)

**Analysis**
Sylvia Plath is a renowned poet and writer of the ‘confessional’ period of poetry; she always poured herself and her traumas, such as thoughts of death, depression and relationships, into her writing. Many of Plath’s poems and stories dealt with her depression. Some of these poems are //Daddy//, //Cut//, and //The Bell Jar//. Plath’s inner turmoil is easily unearthed in these writings especially. The thematic importance of depression is a constant in all of Plath’s work. Plath’s poem //Daddy// is one of her most esteemed poems. //Daddy// has a plethora of ideas portrayed in it, such as references to the holocaust to try to explain how deeply she feels for her father. This feeling, however, is written in an eerie and choleric tone. Plath’s father died when she was only nine years old. Plath exclaims that her father “bit [her] pretty red heart in two... At twenty [she] tried to die-And get back, back, back to you” (//Daddy//). His death impacted her so greatly that she blames him for her depression later in life, and as the reason for her attempted suicide. Daddy contains numerous dark implications of death, suicide and hatred for her father. Another obscure poem by Plath known as //Cut// indicated a more brutal side to her creative genius. This poem paints a disturbing picture of violence and war. The poem is about a cut on her finger that provoked extremely violent imagery. //Cut// was written during Plath’s mental breakdown in college; therefore, these themes can be viewed as inner turmoil within her. Plath conveys the theme of her personal depression once again by exclaiming that “[she is] ill-I have taken a pill to kill-the thin papery feeling” (//Cut//). In this line, Plath accepts her depression and decides that suicide is the only escape from her sadness. Plath attempted drug overdose after writing //Cut//. This poem not only illustrated her depression, but acted as a warning of her later suicide attempt in college. Plath’s novel, //The Bell Jar//, is also critically acclaimed. In this story, Plath writes about the life of Esther Greenwood, a woman working as a magazine intern and literature major. Although Esther is in a position that others would mostly be envious of, she is completely disoriented and confused. When she was rejected to study under the supervision of a famous author, she suffered from a severe depression and attempted suicide. Plath describes Esther’s downward spiral into depression as a paralysis by stating that she “saw [herself] sitting at the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose” (The Bell Jar). In //The Bell Jar//, Plath uses Esther almost autobiographically, mapping out some of the most depressing stages of her life by the end of the story. It is only a month after //The Bell Jar// was published that Plath commits suicide. Plath is one of the most famous poets of the confessional period. People who read Plath still marvel over her suicide, although it was clear as day in her writing that it was inevitable. Plath was a master of her craft; she had the writing skills to make the most impersonal object or subject seem as the most crucial part of her life. In //Cut//, Plath warns of her suicide while accepting her depression. In //Daddy//, she blames her father for the origin of her sorrows. In //The Bell Jar//, Plath uses a character, Esther Greenwood, to depict her own mental illness and depression. Although depression was a common topic in the confessional period, Plath uses it as an important thematic theme in almost all of her writing.

=__Works Cited__=

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